


Winter's Bane

by Dinoskull, Shadsie



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Dangerous powers, Gen, Ice Powers, Injury, Season 2 Canon Divergence, The Princesses are dangerous when they want to be, The prices of war, Violence, War, not so innocent children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-07 21:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20464400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dinoskull/pseuds/Dinoskull, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: The Princess Alliance sought to resolve conflicts as peacefully as possible, to the point that some would accuse them of merely playing at war.  Most of their number did not expect that one of them would take unnecessary  lethal action.A series of connected fiction between me and Dinoskull based upon a prompt they proposed: "Frosta would be the most likely member of the Princess Alliance to try to kill someone - and to do so with a smile on her face."





	1. Ice Cold

**Author's Note:**

> First Chapter by Shadsie. Second Chapter by Dinoskull. Third Chapter by Shadsie. 
> 
> First Chapter previously posted on the "Dog Days in the Horde and Other Etherian Tales" series of She-Ra fanfiction shorts on Shadsie's account.

**Ice Cold**   
  


* * *

  
  
The robots lay in sparking wreckage.   
  
“Frosta, what are you doing?”Glimmer screamed.   
  
“What?” Frosta protested. “I’m doing war! I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, aren’t I?”   
  
“Get her out! Get her out!” Bow yelped, panicking, dancing around the giant ice-pillar, pounding it, trying to free the frozen figure inside.   
  
Catra and Scorpia sat, tied up, eyes wide. Mermista and Sea Hawk, respectively, stood beside them, holding them on improvised leashes.   
  
Frosta was all smiles. “She was a traitor and I took care of her!”   
  
“Adora, help!” Bow screamed over the field.   
  
Adora was already transformed into She-Ra, dealing with the last of the drones. Her eyes widened when she sprinted over the field and caught sight of the ice-pillar. She took the Sword of Protection and, in a mighty swing, cracked its base. It shattered, releasing its captive.   
  
Bow was quick to catch Entrapta. Her extremities were blue and she wasn’t moving. Her hair fell all around him, completely limp.   
  
“Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” he gasped, bending down with her and rubbing her shoulders to try to warm her up. “Come on, Entrapta, BREATHE!”   
  
Perfuma was quick to Bow’s side, as was She-Ra.   
  
Glimmer grabbed Frosta by the front of her shirt. “What did you DO?!” she demanded.   
  
“Look!” Frosta explained. “Entrapta is our enemy! She betrayed us! She was ATTACKING US WITH WAR-BOTS! I’m totally the hero here.”   
  
“She is our friend!” Glimmer shot back. “Or was. Okay, it’s hard to tell and we needed to fight her, but… killing?”   
  
“The Kingdom of Snows has been at war with the Selkies for generations. My parents sent out soldiers to kill to keep our people safe.”   
  
Bow looked up, still clutching Entrapta close. “In Bright Moon, we avoid killing if we can capture! You know that!”   
  
She-Ra’s hands glowed where she touched her former-friend-turned-enemy. Healing - it was a recently-learned power of hers and rather precarious.   
  
Some of Entrapta’s hair twitched weakly. She drew in a sharp breath and shivered. Perfuma wrapped her in vines to try to keep her warm as her hair was a cold, wet mess.   
  
Bow sighed in relief as he rose, cradling her. “Let’s get back to Bright Moon. Quickly.”   
  
“Is she going to be alright?” Scorpia asked as Mermista gave her a little kick to the carapice to get her to her feet.   
  
“I don’t know,” Bow said, shaking his head.   
  
Frosta walked at the rear of the party. She did not understand why everyone was fawning over the traitor. She hoped that Entrapta wouldn’t make it. It would make one less enemy to deal with.   
  
In her kingdom, she would have been sentenced to exile in the far tundra for her crimes, not helped and healed.   
  



	2. Fearful, But Not Frozen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra sits, imprisoned, and thinks about how she's underestimated these princesses. 
> 
> Previously posted as "Fearful, But Not Frozen" on Dinoskull's account.

**Fearful, But Not Frozen **  


* * *

  
  
  
  
** “This isn’t a game Catra.”**

**“It was never a game to me! And I intend to win it.”**

From her prison tent in Bright Moon, Catra’s mind kept flashing back to the exchange at the All-Princess-Ball.

Maybe it was all the ice from a few hours before that was bringing out the memory.

“**People are going to get hurt!**”

The image of Entrapta’s body, covered in splotches of blue from cold and lack of oxygen. It wouldn’t leave her. Catra wondered if it ever would.

Catra had always put on a show of not being scared about what the Horde said about the "scary princesses".

And when your first impression of a princess was "Adora the Dork", it was easy for that false bravado to turn true.

The Horde lied about everything else, why wouldn’t they be lying about how dangerous the princesses were?

But then Frosta…

Entrapta hadn’t even been near the rebels, mostly providing occasional long range support and coordinating her robots. Even if Catra thought the princesses’ guilt would keep Entrapta safe, Hordak would be displeased if his “brilliant new asset” was risked unnecessarily. But Entrapta considered some of the new robots more valuable than the ones deployed on the strange forest palace and wanted to be there to observe them firsthand.

But Frosta just charged across the battlefield unheeding.

She wasn’t like the monstrous, almost pitabile princesses of the stories though. She was in full control of her powers and actions.

And that was almost scarier.

**“This isn’t a game Catra.**”

Catra thought she understood that.

But had she really?

Perhaps she had been treating the war as a game. A game that risked serious injury or death (“those are the best ones,'' a wistful memory of her playing recklessly with Adora seemed to say), but a game nonetheless.

Now though…

She was starting to wonder if Glimmer would have actually tried to seriously injure her if Bow hadn’t been so emotionally weak.

They wouldn’t have killed her; they wanted precious Entrapta back so much… but would Sparkles have had a problem breaking an arm if her anger overcame her oh-so-noble moral code?

The flowery one was spoken of with some of the most fear around the Fright Zone. Did Catra underestimate her too?

The mermaid hung out with a pirate, a supposedly dangerous criminal. Would she hesitate if sufficiently crossed?

All this time she had been expecting these princesses to be weak like Adora. But while she knew Adora, she didn’t know_ them _.

Catra didn’t know what she was going to do, but she vowed to herself after this, she would change her approach..

She wasn’t sure in what way; but she needed to adapt, to survive.

The fear of childhood stories of cackling princesses would not overcome her.

The memory of that proudly beaming ice child would not make her falter.

She would not be broken by this.


	3. The Fear in Her Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra gets visitors.

**The Fear in her Eyes**  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
“You’ve got visitors.”   
  
The Bright Moon guard’s words were gruff. The place had gotten tougher since the hostilities with the Horde had grown. Catra had heard rumors that there were no prisons here, only spare rooms. The cell-block she was in smelled of recent construction. She’d already probed for weak points without success.   
  
Catra’s ears flattened and she inspected the claws of her right hand. “Let me guess…your precious little Adora?”  
  
“No.” The guard walked down the hall to open the door.   
  
Catra was immediately off her seat and at the bars of her cell when she saw the two figures enter the hall. Bow was pushing a char with wheels on it. Affixed to the chair was a pole with bags of fluid and drips and in the chair was a mass of purple hair and bandages in a loose gown.   
  
“ENTRAPTA!” Catra called. She could feel her heart-rate a little off-kilter. She knew that her eyes had widened with a kind of terror.   
  
“Hiiii, Catra!” Entrapta cheerfully slurred.   
  
“She insisted on seeing you – and Scorpia, where she’s being kept,” Bow explained. “I don’t think she should even be out of bed yet.”   
  
“I’m fine, Bow,” Entrapta insisted.   
  
“You don’t…look…fine…” Catra trailed off, staring at the bandaged stump where a left hand should have been. She looked back up at Entrapta’s face. She didn’t have her welding mask on – that looked weird enough – she looked kind of “naked” without it. In fact, Catra couldn’t recall a time when she’d seen the scientist without her headgear. She also had a bandage taped to one cheek and a bit of discoloration of the skin peeking out of the edges.   
  
“I’ve got wheels! With clickity-clackers!” Entrapta said, beaming.   
  
“She’s… a little loopy from medication,” Bow explained. “She’s on painkillers.”   
  
“Yeah!” Entrapta added, “The good stuff! Bow… I don’t really need the chair… I can always walk on my hair.”   
  
“You’re too weak for that. Now, we’re here to say hi to Catra, remember?”   
  
“Oh, yeah! How are they treating you, Catra? I heard that they don’t interrogate with those cooool shock batons here.”   
  
“I’m… fine, Entrapta. But you aren’t! What did they do to you?”  
  
“I had really bad frostbite,” the Princess said, looking down sadly at her stump. “The healers here had to amputate. I didn’t feel anything, though! I was asleep when they did it! Don’t worry, Catra! I’m gonna make a new one – a robotic one! I’ve always wanted to try advanced cybernetics melded with biology! I’ve already drawn up some designs!”  
  
Entrapta pulled a notepad and a pen out of her hair with her hair and held it before Catra’s cell. Catra did have to admit that the drawings looked impressive, but she didn’t understand all of the various nerd-scribbling in the notations around them.   
  
“I offered to help,” Bow said sheepishly. “I mean… she’s going to rejoin the Rebellion again, I think?”  
  
Catra glared daggers at “arrow boy.” “It’s not like she has much of a choice between that and being a prisoner of war.”   
  
“Well, I don’t know what your decision will be,” Bow offered, scratching the back of his neck. “We just thought that you might like to see that Entrapta made it.”  
  
“Yep!” the purple-haired woman chimed. “Still alive!”  
  
Another voice, decidedly more youthful sounded from the opposite end of the corridor. “Hey, Bow! Glimmer said I’d find you in here?”   
  
Catra watched Entrapta’s eyes go to pinpoints. She looked as well as she could from her cell. Frosta was approaching from the other end of the hall. 

Entrapta’s jaw quivered. She looked like she was going to scream, but instead issued a tiny, choked off squeak. He hair erupted into flailing tendrils as she bucked up and tried to escape her wheelchair.  
  
“Entrapta! No!” Bow yelped. “Calm down!” He shouted at Frosta. “Frosta, stay back! Leave!”  
  
“What? I didn’t think the traitor would be here!” came her snarky reply.   
  
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” Entrapta gasped out. She catapulted on the ends of her hair out of her chair, ripping the IV cords out of her right arm with a short spray of blood. She ran on her hair as fast as she could go toward the other end of the hall. She didn’t get far before collapsing. Bow caught and steadied her.   
  
“FROSTA, LEAVE NOW!” he demanded.   
  
“H-Hordak will save me!” Entrapta choked.   
  
Catra paced her in her cell, her tail bristling, unable to do anything where she was.   
  
Frosta hastily ran out.   
  
“Guards!” Bow called. “Medics!” He tried to help Entrapta up. “You’ll be okay, Entrapta. She’s gone, alright? Frosta is gone.”   
  
Entrapta stayed kneeling, trying to get herself up on one shivering arm and tentacles of hair. Catra could see the fear that was still in her eyes.   
  
Catra found that she was also shivering. That ice-child Princess’ mere presence in the room with that unnerving, cheerful smile of hers – which hadn’t wavered in the presence of the person she’d almost murdered – had chilled the entire room by at least ten degrees. 


End file.
